Over dinner tonight, Chris, his two cousins and I sat in a cozy booth at Beauty and Essex discussing everything and anything. They told us about how they were just in Toronto with Chris’s brother, and how straight faced he was when they were directly asking him when they thought Chris and I would get engaged. He said he reckoned that their cousin and his girlfriend in Singapore would most likely get engaged before us, and they thought nothing of it and thought he was serious with this belief.

They also mentioned that they discussed Chris’s brother’s relationship with me, and he had told them that he looked at me like a sister because of how close we had become and how often we communicated. I suppose I never actively thought about it before, but in that moment, I immediately felt really emotional because I realized how true it was. We really do act like siblings. Even though he is technically four months older than I, I look at him as though he is my younger brother, and we talk and bicker the way brothers and sisters do, but we immediately get over any differences, if there are any, and carry on like nothing has ever happened. He really is like a second brother to me.

Of course, then I thought of Ed, and I felt pain inside. Ed will never get to meet this guy that I call my second brother. Even though that meeting may have been slightly awkward considering how quiet Ed was and how gregarious Ben is, it made me so sad to think that Ed will never get to meet Ben, and Ben will never get to meet Ed. Chris’s parents will never meet Ed; no one in Chris’s family will ever meet him. There are so many moments and experiences and people that he will miss because he left my world this time last year. He’s missed our engagement, and he’s missed us sharing it with everyone we love.

I love Ed and miss him every single day. But I can feel that he would be happy knowing that I have Ben in my life now — certainly not as a replacement of any sort, but as someone extra in my life who will love me in a very similar capacity that he is no longer physically capable of.